The prior art is replete with assorted methodology and apparatus utilized to inspect, sort and thereafter separate contaminants, and other foreign bodies from a product stream such as one containing tobacco lamina, and which has been produced from a threshing operation. Various apparatus and schemes have been proposed relative to the inspection and sorting of tobacco leaves prior to threshing. For example, the Office's attention is directed to U.S. Pat. No. 3,968,366 to Asfour; and U.S. Pat. No. 7,383,840 to Coleman, and which both disclose a machine for scanning tobacco leaves to reject unacceptable, that is, discolored or damaged leaves and other undesirable particles before they are threshed into multiple small pieces. One of the inventors in the present application has disclosed in several earlier US patents, those being, U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,335,847 and 7,448,391, a method and apparatus for foreign body separation from a material flow, and which provides a convenient means whereby a flow of tobacco may be supplied to a foreign body detection device, and thereafter contaminants are removed from the tobacco stream in a convenient and reliable fashion not possible heretofore.
Notwithstanding the various prior art devices and schemes used previously to separate contaminants from a tobacco stream, producers of various tobacco products have continued to try and develop an apparatus and methodology which will increase the quality of the tobacco lamina produced by such sorting devices so as to insure the removal of substantially all contamination from the tobacco stream being inspected.
An apparatus and methodology which avoids the shortcomings attendant with the prior art devices and practices utilized, heretofore, is the subject matter of the present application.